The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

I wolde think their life moste happye of all men, if they
might therwith enjoye their auncient libertie … Emonge
these simple sowles, a fewe clothes serue the naked;
weightes and measures are not needefull to sure as can not
skyll of crafte and deceyte and haue not the vse of
pestiferous monye … they seeme to lyue in that goulden
worlde of the whiche owlde wryters speake so much;
wherein men lyued simply and innocentlye without
inforcement of lawes, without quarrelingue Iudges and
libelles, contente onely to satisfie nature. 1
In the main, the writing of these and other non-Indians raises the
noble savage convention to a mystical and spiritual height from
which the Indian falls at his or her great peril. But whites are not
the only writers trapped in the Romantic Fallacy, as I term it: a
week spent sampling entries in the proliferation of anthologies,
journals, and literary magazines devoted to American Indian
writing and in perusing a few of the many American Indian
novels will assure a reader that Indians are without fail innocent
and magical beings who have run afoul of fate and that the ways
of tribal life were simple, stark, and pure, guided by a few
simple philosophical principles and a transcendent
comprehension of the laws of the universe which the Indians, in
their simple but pure way, adhered to unfailingly.
While this portrayal provides little factual evidence for the
spiritual, social, or material life of aboriginal Native
Americans, Martyr raised this convention to the exalted status of
fact. As a consequence, little material that placed tribal life and
persons into a context that was their own found its way to
popular outlets or critical circles. Indeed, white writers and
poets garnered attention by virtue of their ability to manipulate
Martyr’s view for white pleasure.
Idealization of a group is a natural consequence of separation